Question

Read the passage carefully, which discusses the historiography of early modern science. Then, match each structural segment of the passage (left) to its corresponding abstract rhetorical function (right).

Historically, the prevailing framework for interpreting the evolution of early modern science was the discontinuity thesis, a paradigm that posited a sharp demarcation between the esoteric, seemingly irrational pursuits of medieval alchemy and the rigorous empiricism that ostensibly characterized the Scientific Revolution. Proponents of this view, largely operating within a nineteenth-century positivist framework, characterized alchemy as a monolithic set of mystical superstitions and obscurantist dogmas. In their estimation, these outdated practices had to be systematically dismantled and philosophically discarded before the foundational principles of rational chemistry could genuinely emerge. According to this pervasive orthodoxy, the triumph of mechanical philosophy depended upon an outright and permanent rejection of alchemical epistemology, rendering the two intellectual domains conceptually irreconcilable.

In the late twentieth century, this rigid bifurcation was robustly challenged by the ascendancy of the continuity thesis. A cohort of revisionist historians meticulously demonstrated that traditional alchemical laboratories were, in fact, sites of rigorous empirical observation, quantitative measurement, and sophisticated material manipulation. Rather than being swept away by the advent of the scientific revolution, alchemical practices were compellingly shown to have furnished the nascent experimental method with crucial operational techniques and indispensable chemical knowledge. This revisionist scholarship effectively reframed alchemy not as the unyielding antithesis of modern science, but as its indispensable methodological progenitor, thereby establishing a historical narrative of evolutionary inheritance rather than abrupt revolutionary rupture.

More recently, however, a pluralistic model has emerged in the historiography, identifying a fundamental theoretical flaw embedded within even the continuity thesis. Contemporary scholars argue that by evaluating alchemy primarily on its capacity to anticipate or contribute to modern experimentalism, the continuity thesis inherently relies upon a profound teleological bias. This retrospective framing inevitably reduces alchemy to a mere stepping stone in the march toward modernity, ignoring its intrinsic theoretical objectives and internal coherence. The pluralistic model instead advocates for evaluating alchemy on its own terms—as a parallel, highly sophisticated epistemic framework that possessed distinct metaphysical goals. In this view, alchemy interacted dynamically with mechanical philosophy, exchanging conceptual resources without necessarily being subsumed or superseded by it.

This shift in historiographical perspective carries profound implications for the textual analysis of seminal figures of the period, perhaps most notably Isaac Newton. Under the hegemony of the discontinuity thesis, Newton’s extensive alchemical writings were routinely dismissed as eccentric, inexplicable aberrations from his otherwise rational output. Under the continuity thesis, they were somewhat salvaged as primitive, halting exercises in chemical empiricism. The pluralistic model, by contrast, provides a robust analytical framework for fully integrating Newton’s alchemical texts with his mathematical physics. It illuminates how his lifelong quest to understand the active, occult forces of nature was not a contradiction of his rational mechanics, but a complementary facet of a unified, conceptually expansive intellectual worldview.